Hello Client Access and Intake Workgroup members,

Thanks to everyone who attended our 8/28 intake workgroup meeting! At this meeting we discussed that this committee exists within the Access to Justice Board Delivery System Committee, State Plan Action and Resource Committee, and that our work is guided by State Plan Goal 3, Strategy 3. Joan Kleinberg, Joanna Otero, and Eva Wescott provided a history of NJP's CLEAR hotline and more recent updates to this system. We discussed the role of centralized intake, specifically, CLEAR (statewide) and 2-1-1 (King County).

Intake Definition

We brainstormed thoughts about a common definition of intake. Some themes that arose during this conversation include:

screening and intake are two different pieces of a process, which also includes considerations like who does intake (legal aid/social services/advocate/other), scheduling, info-gathering, and issue-spotting/assessment/referral
when working through the intake process, clients are most interested in whether and what kind of help is available
regardless of how a person gets to an entry point for legal help (CLEAR, 2-1-1, front desk, online portal, clinic, etc.), intake should be the path to help and not a closed door

Joan Kleinberg, with help from the group, offered a draft definition of intake:

Intake is the process by which a person learns about and requests services from legal aid, and is assessed for eligibility and nature of legal problem.

Please review this draft and provide your suggestions to Joanna (joannao@nwjustice.org), Eva (eva.wescott@nwjustice.org), or me (catherineb@kcba.org) before our next meeting.

Workgroups

In order to move forward with the work of this group, we discussed several subgroups to take on the following tasks. We hope you will volunteer for 1 or 2 (or more if you are so inclined!) of these groups. Please contact Joanna, Eva, or me with your preferred workgroup(s).

System mapping to identify where and with whom intake is happening and develop a comprehensive intake map
Collect information about intake processes from civil legal aid providers which will likely include an electronic survey, a stakeholder meeting at the Oct. Legal Advocate Training in Wenatchee, and other strategies
Collect information about intake processes from and/or consult with social service, health, and over service providers
Collect information from client communities about their experience with access to and their expectations for intake processes and procedures
Collect information about intake from programs, states, regions, etc. outside of Washington

Intake workgroup name, communication and next meeting

Based on the conversation at our 8/28 meeting, we propose changing the name of our group to the Client Access and Intake workgroup.
You might have noticed that WSBA has generously provided us with a listserv to make our inter-group communication easier. To make sure you receive this group's messages, please add atj-intake@list.wsba.org to your safe sender lists. Please also be in touch if you have colleagues who should have received this message so we can make sure they are part of the listserv.
Our next meeting will happen at the Statewide Legal Advocate Training in Wenatchee, likely on Tuesday afternoon (10/9). We look forward to meeting with folks who will be at the Advocate Training! If you aren't planning to attend the Advocate Training, we will be back in touch with a meeting summary afterward.

Thanks to each of you for all that you do!

Joanna, Eva, and Catherine